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How many movies have you seen where a man sees a woman across a room filled with people dancing and he thinks, “That’s it, I’m in love.”

I believe that men are a lot more likely to say, “I fell in love at first sight,” and women to say, “Gee, he’s really hot.” Guys are visual – “I fell in love at first sight.” They fall in love with what they see and what they feel right after seeing it. If a man sees a woman who he finds attractive and he feels she is sexually interested in him, he’ll think he’s fallen in love right then and there.

However, no matter what he thinks, at this point he is not in love. “Over 90 percent of a man’s decision at this stage is purely based on visual cues. Some men get super glued on boobs, others on booties and others on legs, etc. Physical features and bouncy behavior that suggests youth, health and vitality… It’s just pure sexual chemistry. At this stage, you are still dispensable and interchangeable. You’re still just another woman in the pack, and he is still very much attracted to several other women at the same time.”

A lot of people call into my show saying, “Oh my gosh, I’ve been seeing him/her for three weeks and we’re totally in love,” but my answer is always the same: “No you’re not.” There could be a romantic or sexual attraction, but that’s all. This is just the fantasy stage – you think he or she is what you fantasize you want. It’s the stage where you’re wearing rose-colored glasses and ignoring things. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve told callers, “You ignored these things, didn’t you?,” and after denying it several times, they eventually say, “Well, yes, but I didn’t know they were going to be this bad. I saw what I wanted to see.”

If you’ve got a guy who wants to do the settling down process by shacking up, humping out of wedlock, and making babies without any commitment, then I’ve got a news flash for you: he’s not in love with you. No man in love with a woman does that. When a man is in love, he stakes his claim. All throughout the animal kingdom, males make it clear who is their woman. Men enforce it by giving their woman a ring, a ceremony, and a commitment of fidelity.

So, for all you silly girls out there thinking that a guy who wants to hook up or shack up is in love with you, you are so unbelievably wrong.

Why are some people afraid to love? I can give you a handful of reasons:

(1) Fear of disapproval
People fear disapproval. Some of you are afraid of crossing religious, racial, national, political, educational, and social lines. Some of you are afraid to love because you are gay. There are all kinds of things people fear will make their families and/or the general public shun them — they are afraid to love because there will be hell to pay.

(2) Fear of being consumed
Some of us have a fear of being consumed, especially in today’s climate. Let’s say you had a mommy who was way past “helicopter” to the point of “octopus.” Her love meant you had no room…no space…no self beyond her tentacles. Some people who grew up under that situation are a little afraid to love because they don’t want to feel that again.

(3) Fear of commitment
You’ve heard this a million times – some people just fear commitment. Commitment is a conscious choice, but it is always faced with the challenges of an unconscious brain. People may deny that they are in love because commitment keeps them answerable to their “conscience,” and the resulting guilt feels like it is too much. There are ways you need to behave in order to get love in return and make love survive.

(4) Fear of loss
Some people have faced a lot of loss in life — rejection, abandonment, a parent’s death, suicide, being dumped by some idiot they met on the Internet. They are afraid and don’t buy the “it’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.” They’re in the “it’s better to not love than go though all the pain again.” It’s foolish, and their negativity will probably make a relationship end.

(5) Fear of disappointing
There are people who just fear disappointing their partner. They think, “When they really get to know me…when they see me naked…when they see I have problems, they’ll be disappointed. It’s better to just keep my distance.”

(6) Fear of being found out
Some people don’t want to love because they are still searching for the perfect mommy, whether they are male or female. Loving somebody is not the issue — being perfectly mommied is. They will look for situations where they are perfectly mommied, but they don’t give love. Just like a screaming baby throwing up food out one end and pooping out the other, they take but do not give love.

Gordon Yeager, 94, and his wife Norma, 90, left their small town of State Center, Iowa, on Wednesday to go into town, but never made it. A car accident sent the couple to the emergency room and intensive care unit with broken bones and other injuries. But, even in the hospital, their concerns were each other.

The most important part of the story is what comes next. I really want you to think about it.

“She was saying her chest hurt and what’s wrong with Dad? Even laying there like that, she was worried about Dad,” said the couple’s son, Dennis Yeager, 52. “And his back was hurting and he was asking about Mom.”

When it became clear that their conditions were not improving, the couple was moved into a room together in beds side-by-side where they could hold hands.

He joined his right hand to her left hand, and that’s how they died.

The key to the whole story, however, was they were concerned about each other up to the moment they passed away.

I wrote a book several years ago entitled “The Proper Care and Feeding of Marriage,” in which I talk about waking up each day, looking over at your spouse and making the decision to make their day worthwhile and to make them happy that they are married to you. In other words, instead of waking up with all your bitchy thoughts, all your self- centered thoughts about what you’re not getting, what you’re not feeling, wake up thinking what you do for him/her to make his/her life worth living and worth living with you. That is the key to this couple. And that’s the key to them dying together.

Eighty-four-year-old Robert, whose health had declined steadily in recent years, always expected to go first. His 80-year-old wife, Darlene, had been his steady caretaker at home they built with their own hands, until she was diagnosed with cancer and given only a few weeks to live.

When Robert learned Darlene was terminally ill, he quickly grumbled: “I’m terminal, too.” While family members and caretakers just chalked off that statement to the emotion of the moment, as his wife lay beside him in her last moments, he, too because to die. Only six hours separated their deaths.
It was a bittersweet moment for the couple’s five children and extended family.

While they’d lost their mother and father, they knew their parents, the couple who lived and breathed love for one another, who spooned together every night while watching the news, who even walked to their mailbox in tandem had received their last wish.

Their story of love and long-term devotion showcases an aspect of humanity that even modern science has a hard time explaining: that sometimes strength of will decides whether we live or die.

Their chemistry was magical, the family said. They got up from bed together and always waited for the other to get in bed at night. Mornings over coffee together developed a mutual plan of attack for the day. Darlene always made sure Robert’s lunch was packed and clothes folded for him to wear.

They eventually had nine children, and it’s safe to say they proved their doctor wrong.

Robert suffered strokes, kidney troubles, congestive heart failure and other ailments following, but he never complained.

“I’m fine,” he’d always say.

In retirement, they never left each other’s sides. If a check needed depositing, they went to the bank together. Grocery shopping was done in tandem. The pair even ventured to the mailbox together everyday unless one was too ill to do so.

In the days before their deaths, hospice had a special bed put into the couple’s bedroom, where youthful pictures of Robert and Darlene hang above their respective bedsides. Robert, in their own bed, held her hand tight as she began to die.

Not long after, the nurse came to check on Robert. Astonishingly, his vital signs began to fail. His breathing became broken. He was actively dying, the nurse told the family. There were no drugs or methods he’d used to quicken death; it just began to happen.

They gave him two days to live, tops. Instead, he joined his wife in death only six hours after hers.

Robert and Darlene, whose services were held Thursday, will be buried in the same way they lived their lives together.

In the same casket.

Dying beside the love of your life and passing into eternity together is the stuff of legends, but it’s well documented around the world. It’s some connection. It’s some special connection. In some cases, research shows that one person’s heartbeat can affect and even regulate another’s (working as a type of life support).

Now, in none of these cases where spouses died within minutes or hours of each other was there a suicide. I think the amazing thing to take from these stories is that these relationships lasted that long. But it’s a simple fact (and one to remember when you find yourselves crabbing and whining about each other): these husbands and wives lived to make sure the other was happy. And, in doing so, they were happy.

It’s really not that complicated, and it’s something very special to think about this Valentine’s Day.